Monday, January 19, 2015

UPDATE: I've been told that the my interpretation is mistaken (which happens only on days that end in a "y"). The equation sheets posted on the page linked to below are the real and true 2015 equation sheets of record. The course description documents that include a previous version of these sheets need to be updated with the revised equation sheets, and it's that that will not occur until April.

Revisions to the AP Physics 1 and 2 Equation TablesThe AP Physics 1 and 2 equation tables – previously published in the course and exam description, curriculum modules, and practice exams – are being revised to provide complete definitions of symbols. Updated versions of those documents will be available by April 2015. [Emphasis mine] In the meantime, please disregard the equation tables in the current versions of these publications. Instead, refer to these new, revised equation tables and share them with your students…"
I recently turned 50, so I realize that my recollection that the release of the revised tables was set for February 2015 could be in error.

But the College Board exhausted my patience when it repeatedly set and then pushed back the publication of the redesigned AP1 and AP2 course descriptions, starting in 2008.

Like I said, it could be my own memory at fault here.

If they set a February date for the new equation tables and then moved it back to April, who among us would be surprised?

If they did retreat from their own deadline on the equation tables, I'm guessing they didn't push back the deadline for classroom teachers to submit course syllabi for the AP course audit. You know the one: where you spell out in great detail the minutia of these courses that you've never taught based on a 230-page course description only recently made public, so as to show that you've turned on a dime from the old vision to the new vision. You had the summer to retool, redesign, and re-imagine.

"These are 3-D printed sculptures designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. The placement of the appendages is determined by the same method nature uses in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotation speed is synchronized to the strobe so that one flash occurs every time the sculpture turns 137.5º—the golden angle. If you count the number of spirals on any of these sculptures you will find that they are always Fibonacci numbers.

For this video, rather than using a strobe, the camera was set to a very short shutter speed (1/4000 sec) in order to freeze the spinning sculpture."

Monday, January 12, 2015

Demonstration or lab equipment for physics classes can vary from homemade of scraps and junk to store bought and polished shiny pieces. I believe there is a place for each in the classroom but sometimes there is no beating a truly well made purchased piece. An advantage to purchased pieces is that they often stand the test of time and are used year after year (or decade after decade depending on your teaching experience).

Many of us keep a "wish list" of sorts for our classrooms. This may be mental or you may actually have a collection of marked catalogs or ripped out pages. A wise physics teacher (*cough* Dean *cough*) once told me that keeping such a list could help get equipment for your classroom when random money falls from the sky. While it doesn't quite rain I have been lucky enough to have such lists ready at the end of the fiscal year or at the beginning of a new program when an administration is asking for things to buy. That's right, sometimes they ask us and you better be ready!

Yet sometimes you know just what you want to buy but you don't know where to find it. It may have been something you saw at a conference or in a catalog somewhere sometime and you can't quite place it. Whatever it is you just know, "If I had this then my students would completely understand [insert tough concept here]." Perhaps the most frustrating part is that you know the equipment is out there, somewhere, you just don't know where to look. But someone does; maybe avid Blog of Phyz readers?

Another Physics teacher in my district recently said that he wanted this momentum cart he had read about years ago. The cart has a slanted back (higher at the front, lower at the back)
and marbles or ball bearings are placed in it. At the start the marbles are stopped from rolling
out with a hand at the back of the cart. When you remove your hand the marbles start
to roll out and because of conservation of momentum the cart starts to
move forward. The marbles fall out one at a time and as they continue to fall the cart speeds up. The teacher said that he thought he remembered the second to the last marble would be the
fastest and then the last marble is at rest. This part did not make
sense to me but we will have to get the cart to experiment with.

I made this simple image based on his description and he said it
looks like what he had seen but didn't know where to find one. Over the years a few students have tried to make it but they have not been successful. Has
anyone ever heard or seen anything like this before? Have you seen it for
sale anywhere? Perhaps you know what is is properly called and a quick internet search can help us find it. Any and all help would be appreciated!

And my first attempt to embed a Facebook post and image URL. We'll see how it all goes.

"Yesterday morning, Texan Joshua Thomas took this picture in Red River, NM and shared it with us. He captured a truly special display of ice halo phenomena including rare suncave and sunvex Parry arcs, helic arcs, and intense supralateral and infralateral arcs. See also the diagramed version, which the outstanding folks at US National Weather Service La Crosse Wisconsin did for the photo. To learn more about ice halos and other atmospheric optical phenomena, see the Atmospheric Optics page: www.atoptics.co.uk. Thanks again to Joshua Thomas and NWS La Crosse for taking and documenting this halo display!"

I've updated the "Cosmos in the Classroom" page to include question sets for episodes 1–12 of the Neil deGrasse Tyson-hosted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

The Cosmos page still has all the question sets for Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Those pages have been updated to include name, period, date info in their headers.

So now there are sets for episodes I-XII of Sagan's Cosmos and episodes 1-12 of Tyson's Cosmos. Each series has 13 episodes, but my intent is for students to watch those final episodes without question sets.

My own classroom practice is to follow each unit with an episode of Cosmos. (Sagan's in Physics and Tyson's in AP Physics 2.)

I'm disappointed that Sagan's Cosmos was been removed from streaming video at Netflix and Hulu in September, 2013. That prohibits me from using these lessons as "flipped classroom" assignments.

I own the DVD version of both "seasons" of Cosmos. But I've noticed differences in the episodes on DVD compared to the episodes that stream on Netflix. Some are trivial and insignificant. But one invalidated a question I wrote in an early draft of the Episode 4 question set.

I hope someone out there is cataloguing all the "disc vs. streaming" differences. I'm not even sure why they exist at all. But I haven't delved deeply into the issue, as so many other projects beckon.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

I know it's been a while. And my output was off for 2014 compared to previous years.

The reduced output relates directly to berthing AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2 at Rio while also retooling Physics from the California Content Standards version that I had polished for the past decade to the Next Generation Science Standards version that is expected to blossom in the next year or so.

So yeah, making this all happen at school to the best of my abilities keeps off the streets (and blogs) at night.

I have no idea when this will be completely sorted. It would be an error to presume that once the year is done, I'll have The Perfect Physics, AP 1, and AP 2 curricula all worked out and ready to repeat until retirement. But I also don't expect things to be as bad for me next year as they are this year.

I do have some groovy posts in the works. They'll be up soon! Neil deGrass Tyson's Cosmos and the Tavurvur volcano are topics.

But I must wave the "My Dear Machine" flag once again. I still love the song, and Leigh Nash's voice is dreamy.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this blog are those of the post authors and commenters. They are not necessarily those of The San Juan Unified School District, The California Department of Education, Pearson Education (or any of its imprints).